Category Archives: News Updates

The Pontifical Household announced that the Pope isn’t having a meeting with a ‘c’atholic pro-Gay group today after Mass to screen a video.

Vatican City, Mar 16, 2015 / 05:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Vatican official says there will be no papal endorsement for an LGBT activist video whose backers want it to reach Pope Francis.

Father Gil Martinez, C.S.P., a member of the development team for the video “LGBT Catholics: Owning our Faith,” intended to present the video to Pope Francis in a private audience after morning Mass on March 17, according to the website of the St. Philip Neri Parish and Northwest Paulist Center in the Portland, Ore.

The video contains the personal reflections from self-identified LGBT Catholics, several of whom reject Church teaching.

An official with the Holy See Press Office told CNA March 16 that the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household had not announced any public events for Pope Francis on March 17. This means that “no public or official meetings are scheduled.”

“The Pope can, however, meet whomever he wants, but this cannot mean in any sense an official endorsement, since every audience is intended to be kept private,” the official said. Such meetings are made public “only if some of the people involved speak out about it.”

Well, we can anticipate that someone just might speak out then. It happens quite a bit these days.

The press release for the video said it is dedicated to “achieving the full acceptance of LGBT persons in the Catholic Church.” It said that the video evokes “the need for change” and will “reach thousands, including Pope Francis, many bishops and other prominent Vatican clergy.”

The St. Philip Neri Parish website said that Fr. Mark-David Janus, C.S.P., would also present Cardinal Walter Kasper’s newest book from Paulist Press, “Pope Francis’ Revolution of Tenderness and Love.”

The “Owning our Faith” video is produced and directed by Michael Tomae, a parishioner of New York City’s St. Paul the Apostle Church. Fr. Martinez is pastor of the parish, which shares a mailing address with the “Owning our Faith” project. Tomae is part of the parish’s Out@StPaul LGBT ministry, which is promoting the video on its website.

The “Owning our Faith” video includes interviewees who reject Catholic teaching on sexual morality and marriage.

Matt Putorti, a lawyer from New York City, criticized Catholic teaching in the video, claiming that the Church is telling gay people that “they need to be celibate” and “cannot live fully.”

Putorti said it is “inherently” discriminatory to say, “You can be gay, but you can’t live that life.”

Interviewee Matt Vidal, a lawyer from New York City in a same-sex civil marriage, said that leaving the Church would mean that “it’s never going to change.”

“So we have to continue living here, being an example and encouraging other people to be that example because that’s what’s going to change the Church.”

Another interviewee, Matteo Williamson, co-chairs the transgender caucus of the dissenting Catholic group Dignity USA, which aims to change Catholic teaching on homosexuality.

The “Owning Our Faith” website recommends a list of parishes on the website of New Ways Ministry, another Catholic dissenting group. In 2011, the U.S. Catholic bishops reiterated that the organization is not allowed to identify as Catholic and said that it puts forward positions that do not conform to Catholic teaching.

‘c’atholic group, Dignity USA just invited the vile, pornographic, and decidedly undignified Dan Savage as a speaker. Why are these groups having non-meetings with Pope Francis to promote gay sex?

In London recently “Philippine Francis” Cardinal Tagle taught us all about the new kind of FrancisMercy and how it must be applied throughout the entire Church and the world. This FrancisMercy is much, much different than the bad, bad old Catholic mercy which harmed so many people psychologically now we’ve learned and therefore apologize.

FrancisMercy says, “I’m ok, you’re ok.” FrancisMercy says, “Welcome, welcome.” It says Communion is a healing food for sinners, not some union with God and his Holy Church. Go out to the peripheries, get the sinners and of course the poor, give everyone Holy Communion.

Then what will we have, a Church full of mortal sinners and sacrilege? How does that help anyone? How is it merciful?

Current head of the USCCB, Louisville’s Archbishop Kurtz, after heaping a few thanks, praises, and platitudes on Pope Francis and his upcoming synodal round of trouble, answered some questions for the National Catholic Register.

As one of four delegates to the upcoming ordinary synod, what message will you carry to Rome?

The dimension that I would bring is the unity and integrity of how we worship, how we believe and how we provide pastoral care. It will be very important that there is not a gap between the way we worship, believe and provide pastoral care.

Some lay Catholics are anxious as they watch this synodal process. They fear that something grave could happen, and they don’t seem to be satisfied with the answers that are being given. How have you tried to address such concerns in your own archdiocese?

I can’t say that I am hearing a great deal of anxiety. I sense that, in general, people are eager to reach out to those in need.

Of course, they also want assurance that we will not depart from the time-honored teachings of the Church. There is a rightful concern that we remain true to the teaching of the Church, and that is an attitude I will take to the synod.

People have raised two other issues. First, they want to hear encouragement for faithful witness to fidelity in marriage and family, both in daily life and in specific programs, such as marriage preparation.

Everyone needs to be inspired to the good.

Second, as we look at challenges of married life, we cannot forget the sacrifices spouses make. People mentioned families in which a child might have a disability or there is an unexpected illness. We need to make sure we are reaching out with pastoral care to people who live out their vows under great stress. This is a form of accompaniment.

Message: If you have anxiety about the Synod I don’t hear you. If you are worried the Church will formally break with it’s teaching don’t worry, I will bring a ‘good attitude’ about that. We must always encourage and inspire to do right, but then again……

Next, after touching upon the Pope’s new streamlined annulment push, Abp. Kurtz answers some more direct questions pertaining to last year’s debacle.

What concerns have Catholic raised in public forums about the synods?

Many have talked about the pastoral need for patience from the Church and that it can be difficult for people, day to day, to live a good and faithful life. The Church, in addition to upholding our teaching, needs to offer patience.

A number of people also said they appreciated the opportunity to be listened to.

One common point is the fact that many people had directly experienced the suffering of a failed marriage or knew someone who had. They were sympathetic to the need to reach out to people.

Message: We must demonstrate that we can apply ‘gradualism’ and create a Church environment where people with scandalous lives can be welcome, honored, and respected while we wait for them to do right. Meanwhile we can all learn from their wayward example and benefit from their leadership.

Media reports on the synods have suggested that the Church may change its teaching on same-sex “marriage” and related issues. What concerns have people expressed to you about this subject?

There is a great sense of compassion for people [with same-sex attraction]. They also want to be true to the teachings of the Church that are in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And they want to make sure these teachings are put into practice; first, that every individual, regardless of orientation, be treated with dignity.

Second, many are also aware [of political] advocacy [on this issue] and want to make sure the Church’s definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman is cherished and maintained.

Message: We have tremendous compassion for people attracted to the same sex. It’s so much, much worse for them. They just don’t get treated with dignity. Nevertheless, though their advocates continuously force ever-wider acceptance of their perversions upon children, employers, and families; we must pretend to uphold marriage somehow while we bend to their demands.

Some members of episcopal conferences abroad have signaled that they want to provide Communion for Catholics who have divorced and civilly remarried but have not received annulments. What principles must be applied to evaluate such proposals so that there isn’t a break in the unity of doctrine, worship and pastoral practice?

The overall question is: How do we accompany people who are in irregular situations — separation and divorce, failed marriages and have sought to marry outside the Church? In those cases, it will be the task of the synod to look at many opportunities to provide pastoral care.

The delegates to the synod will have to evaluate each one of the proposals based on theological guidance [regarding its] effect on the theology of the Eucharist and on our need to be in grace as we approach the sacrament.

Message: Even though there are only two ways to accompany people in ‘irregular situations’; i.e., either they move your way or you move theirs; we’re going to have to take a case-by-case look at this. We will put each sinful situation in a case file, and while that case is being evaluated, we’ll move their way and they can receive Holy Communion!

This case-by-case mantra is emerging all over the place.

Finally, we can feel safe knowing that, as a last resort in ‘cases’ of Communion for adulterers, Archbishop Kurtz and the other Synod Fathers will be sure to punt this one to the assembled ‘theologians.’

Al Gore was in the news again Friday at the South by Southwest Conference pushing the cause for which he’s become synonymous: mankind is killing the weather.

“We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends,” Gore said, referring to a proposed federal cap-and-trade system that would penalize companies that exceeded their carbon-emission limits. “And in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics.”

The Climate Change movement is only about one thing; force. It’s a worldwide protection racket and the new FrancisVatican is 100% in compliance. What’s more edifying than the most trusted name in religion selling an Al Gore-sized scam?

I’ll never forget the 2000 election. Gore got all pumped up with muscles, then leaned all over George Bush during the debates, huffing and puffing and making quite the oaf of himself. He couldn’t stand at the podium and be silent like a gentleman while his opponent responded. He didn’t have it in him.

Next he threw a nationwide fit over the inability to inject quite enough fraud into the election to grab it.

Gore, who has made climate change an overriding theme since he lost to George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election, made no mention of his political future. He took several questions from Twitter after his talk. None asked whether he was considering another run for the White House.

He said he hoped his third SXSW appearance would help promote the fight against climate change and to help put pressure on those who say it’s not a problem.

“We have this denial industry cranked up constantly,” Gore said. “In addition to 99 percent of the scientists and all the professional scientific organizations, now Mother Nature is weighing in.”

It’s really quite astounding how ever more preposterous things become doctrine in our television era. Gay people are parents, gender is chosen, ISIS isn’t Islamic, climate change causes a crisis of inequality…and now it also causes terrorism.

He led a presentation on major weather events that he said could be attributed to human activity. He linked troubles in the Middle East at least partially to climate change, saying that drought drove more than a million Syrian refugees into cities already crowded with refugees from the Iraq war.

At one point, Gore’s presentation showed a slide of Pope Francis. “How about this Pope?” Gore said.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, a Vatican official who helped draft the Pope’s anticipated encyclical on the environment, said recently that the planet was getting warmer and that Christians needed to address the problem. Gore said he looks forward to release of the Pope’s document, expected in June or July.

“I’m not a Catholic,” Gore said, “but I could be persuaded to become one.”

Great. That must be the New Evangelization. Talk about hitting a periphery!

Now let’s see if it can get him to bend and kneel for something that’s not money.